


come out, come out (wherever you are)

by watfordbird33



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Bookstores, Boys In Love, M/M, Military Backstory, Small Towns, Watford (Simon Snow), this is way too long
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 03:56:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13895721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watfordbird33/pseuds/watfordbird33
Summary: Penelope Bunce can't write endings. Agatha Wellbelove would like to be heard. Baz Grimm-Pitch might be a vampire--or maybe just a Crossfit freak. And Simon Snow is in way over his head.





	come out, come out (wherever you are)

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for inaccurate descriptions of pretty much everything, some swearing, some mentions of stalking, and a little bit of sex. About the title....I just...I don't know. If it was up to me I wouldn't give anything I wrote a title. I promise the story is better than its name.

“Can I help you,” said the clerk.

“Er—” said Simon, feeling out of his depth. He hadn’t been in a bookstore since going several years ago with Penny, who had since become a novelist and moved to California for the sun. “I’m—I’m not looking for anything in particular—”

It was the middle of August but the clerk had no tan except for darker circles underneath his eyes. Simon wondered if he was a vampire and subsequently got distracted by looking for fangs when the clerk opened his mouth.

“Oi,” said the clerk. It was not a friendly kind of oi. It was more of a _fuck off_ kind of oi. He was studying Simon like Simon had sprouted wings. “Are you quite all right?”

“—No,” Simon decided, after a moment’s thought, “no.” He waited for concern but he had been expecting too much. The clerk just stared at him over the rims of his round-lens glasses. If he was a vampire he was doing an exceedingly good job of hiding it; there had been no fangs and he looked exactly like the owner of a shabby small-town bookstore other than the lack of tan. Some people, Simon reminded himself firmly, just didn’t tan.

“You’re out of breath,” said the clerk who may or may not have been a vampire. He looked bored. He had looked bored since the moment Simon had come in.

“I know. I was—” There was really nothing else to say except the truth, or part of it. “Running.”

“Were you.”

Simon bristled. This sounded like a challenge. The clerk himself was just a challenge, all around. “I was running fast. I’m looking for a _running book,”_ he said with as much dignity as he could muster. “A book. About running.”

“But you’re not looking for anything in particular.”

“I am. Now. I wasn’t before. But now I am.” 

The clerk wouldn’t stop staring at him, so Simon crossed his arms. Penny had once told him that he looked bigger when he crossed his arms. He wasn’t sure about that but it did give him a sort of confidence boost by covering up the stain on his left breast. _He_ hadn’t spilled, of course, but the clerk wasn’t to know about the man in the coffee shop who’d been inconsiderately reading on his phone. 

“On towards the back,” said the clerk, finally.

“What?”

“Sports section. Towards the back. Right before the loft.”

There was indeed a loft though it was rather a half-hearted one. For a moment Simonwaited, looking at it stupidly, and then the clerk gave a soft snigger behind him. This, Simon decided, was too far. He was not the sort of guy to chew out waiters or bookstore clerks in public but he had suffered enough indignity at the hands of this posturing clown.

“Can’t you bloody see it,” said the clerk as Simon opened his mouth to start in on him; “it’s right there, isn’t it.”

“This is ridiculous,” said Simon, after he had gaped a few times in straight-up disbelief. Because the man’s accent kept getting posher and posher he was inclined to think it was fake. “I mean, this is utterly ridiculous. Don’t you _want_ me to buy a book?”

“Of course I want you to buy a book,” said the clerk, “but you’d most likely already made up your mind about it when you came in. So ’s’not like anything _I_ say’s going to make a difference.”

Simon couldn’t help himself. No one had an accent that posh. “Are you really English?”

The clerk gave Simon a look which was so frightening in its distaste that Simon actually shrank back a step or two. Then he recovered himself and crossed his arms again. The clerk crossed his arms, too. Facing him Simon had to admit the action was impressive. He looked now like neither a vampire nor a bookstore owner and more like a Crossfit freak. An English Crossfit freak, Simon amended. Did they _have_ Crossfit in England?

“D’you want me to _get_ a book for you?”

“I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you,” said Simon, smarmily. He was terrific at being smarmy. On his last video call with Penny he had been so smarmy she’d hung up on him after only twenty minutes. It served her right, really. He was still pissed at her for going out to California and selling all those books. —Books, he thought, and then, looking at the smug white face of the bookstore clerk, “Do you have any of Penelope Bunce’s novels?”

It turned out he did. Four of them, in fact. Simon couldn’t remember how many there actually were but he figured Penny couldn’t have written _that_ many in the two years she’d been in California. He went up to the loft glad to leave the clerk behind and stood in front of the shelf looking at them. They all had the same cover and the same blocky font for _Penelope M. Bunce._ He couldn’t remember her middle name. When he spared a glance at the desk the clerk was reading again with his round-lens glasses set low on his nose. He was a fucking _joke._ —No, Simon thought; he’s not even a joke. He’s a caricature. He’s a bad dream.

Simon slipped all four of Penny’s novels— _Havoc, The Valley, Georgia’s Surprise,_ and _The Dark Hart—_ under his good arm. They were all at least four hundred pages thick but he’d looked inside and the text was big. He deliberated for a moment on whether he actually wanted to go through with this. Buying the books, while funding Penny, would also be funding the asshole at the desk. In the end though he decided probably the guy didn’t run the place anyway and got a flat salary for working shifts. He went back down the stairs and slammed the books in a stack in front of the clerk.

“Like her?” said the clerk, putting his own book away.

Simon didn’t feel like getting into the particulars of his relationship with the author. “I’m buying them, aren’t I?”

The clerk made a face. About halfway through scanning the books with a little wand that beeped he put down _Georgia’s Surprise_ and looked up at Simon again. “What about your running book?” he said.

“Oh—” Simon was taken aback. He settled for, “I didn’t really want it, anyway.”

The clerk shook his head and finished ringing Simon up. When the register had clicked to seventy-two dollars he glanced towards Simon as if expecting him to come up short but Simon pulled out his wallet and handed over four twenties. Goddamn hardbacks. He hoped Penny knew he loved her a lot. “Have a nice day,” said the clerk as he handed the books back over the counter. He was making an extreme effort not to look at Simon’s bad hand. He had a smirk pulling at his lips which made the sentiment sound more like _have a shitty one._

“You, too,” said Simon, and he left—checking up the street before he turned left, just to be safe. The bells on the door made a little jingling noise and outside the sunlight struck him white and heavy right between the eyes.

 

He and Penny had both gone to Watford Academy which was an inordinately expensive boarding school in northern Massachusetts. It was the sort of place you hated when you were there and them reminisced about fondly over drinks twenty years down the line. The only reason Simon got in was that his father Senator David R. Snow III had been one of their most celebrated alumni. Simon himself was a dunce. He had never minded admitting it; it was just how it was. Penny of course insisted he wasn’t but then again she had met him when she’d signed up to be a tutor and he’d signed up for tutoring.

It had been clear from the beginning what Simon’s father wanted which was for Simon to become either a lawyer or a senator, marry a Watford girl, and have a lot of kids. David wasn’t really abusive but he was loud and drank too much and the one time that Simon had hesitantly ventured he didn’t much like law David had pushed him into a chair and said if he wanted an education he’d shut up and do as he was told. Simon actually didn’t care one way or another if he got an education. He had just shut up because David at that point had been the only thing he’d had left in the world.

At Watford there were scones at every meal. There was also a soccer field which people called the _pitch_ and a dinky sort of labyrinth people called _the Catacombs._ It was all very phony and terrible and about two months in Simon told Penny what he really wanted which was to join the military after Watford and not think about much else. She looked a little concerned at first but after meeting his father at the first parents’ weekend she said she thought that would be absolutely fine. She of course was planning to get her bachelor’s and then her master’s in astrophysics while minoring in addictions research and running a social justice campaign. Her slogan running for class president in ninth grade had been, _If Bunce can’t get it done, no one can._ That same year Simon had run for treasurer and lost.

“You should try again,” encouraged Penny, counting her votes. She had won but she wanted to know the exact margin by which she had triumphed over Nasty Niall the FBLA president. 

“I’m not going to _try again,”_ said Simon disparagingly. He was supposed to be helping her count but somehow he had found himself hanging upside down over the edge of her mattress and was disinclined to fight it. “Isn’t this proof, Pen? That I’m not destined for the political life?”

Penny finished counting her votes and sat up. She had dramatic frizzy hair she dyed a different color every year. This year it was pink for breast cancer awareness but on national coming out day she’d put purple and blue in, too. A bunch of girls had stopped to smile at her and Simon had tagged along baffled until he’d finally asked her what the significance of the colors were. “Wherever you end up you’ve got to have _grit,”_ she said. “Military or politics or otherwise. Run as my VP next year.”

“I don’t think so, Pen…”

But he had of course and then the year after that as well. It was his senior year by the time he finally made treasurer, and only then, he speculated, because he was graduating and they felt sorry for him. Being treasurer largely involved following Penny around and reading huge sums of money self-importantly off of budget sheets. It also meant that on the last night of senior year right after receiving his respectable ASVAB grade Simon took a bit of money out of the vault set aside for next year’s freshman field day and bought most of the senior class fake IDs in Boston. When they asked him very drunk where he had got the cash he just winked and shrugged. The very next day Penny drove him with his paperwork to a MEPS and from there to a hotel where she kissed him on the cheek and said if he died she’d be out there personally to gut whoever’d done it. It was nice of her but overall sort of empty. 

As Simon lay in the narrow hotel bed watching the spill of city lights through open curtains he couldn’t help thinking about where he’d be a few months from now. His stomach hurt; he turned over in bed. He tried to sleep for two hours and when sleep didn’t come he got up and called Agatha Wellbelove with whom he had gone out with once or twice in junior year. 

She answered with champagne glasses clinking behind her. “Si,” she said, sounding unsurprised. “What’s up.”

“Do you want a drink?” he said.

“This is out of the blue.” She was a little drunk already but if he hadn’t gone out with her beforehe wouldn’t have noticed it at all. “Where are you?”

“The Marriott near Davis Square.”

“Oh, fabulous. I’m literally a block away. Meet in the lobby, then?”

He said okay and hung up and went to change. He was still in the jeans and sweater he’d worn to take his physical though during most of the physical of course he hadn’t worn anything at all. Tomorrow he would be going back to be sworn in. On Friday the envelope would arrive at the Snow residence which would inform his father he had unenrolled from both Amherst and UMass. He couldn’t help it; as he stripped his sweater and replaced it with a black T-shirt he began to laugh. The look on David’s face would transcend all human understanding and clear the next dimension easily.

“Hello,” said Agatha in the lobby. She had put her hair up since last night when it had been down in a smooth gold curtain across her back. She looked good. She looked more than good. She looked delicious; she looked like she knew what she wanted. Simon wasn’t sure what he wanted. In theory just a drink. He said hello and led her to the bar.

“I heard you’re joining the military,” she said when they had sat down.

“I am,” he said. “I mean, that’s the plan. I’m going to be sworn in tomorrow.”

She looked impressed and he ordered drinks for both of them so he wouldn’t blush: martinis. The bartender raised his eyebrows at their fake IDs. “This is surreal,” said Agatha, smiling. “I haven’t talked to you since—what, junior year?”

“Junior year.”

“And you just wanted to grab a drink? Randomly?”

“Yeah,” said Simon, flushing, “yeah.” The bartender brought them their martinis and Simon took a cautious sip. He wished he’d ordered Diet Coke.

“Or maybe,” said Agatha.

Simon looked at her. She had her drink raised halfway to her lips and there was something in the way she was staring at him that made him think of a cat, or some other predatory animal about to pounce. Out of the corner of his eye Simon could see the bartender watching them. 

“Maybe?” he said.

“Maybe you wanted to—”

Simon was sweating. He put down his drink and stood up. Agatha stood, too, still frozen smiling, gathering her coat. They had been at the bar for maybe five minutes. Simon left a ten on the counter and they went upstairs to his double bed.

In the morning Simon regretted it but he regretted it more a few months later when Agatha’s first letter arrived in Afghanistan where he was stationed. He had meant for it to be a one-night stand—thought he’d basically ensured it by telling her where he’d be the following day. And yet now there was this. He pinched her picture out of the manila envelope with two fingers. The other men in his squad laughed at his ginger removal but they stopped when they saw Agatha’s picture. She was posed dramatically against a wall, her head tipped back, unsmiling. Low-cut dress; hair down across her cleavage. “Damn,” said Rhys, and Gareth who had a girlfriend back in Maine just shook his head. Simon folded the picture in half and stuck it in his breast pocket. Two weeks later she wrote again.

He never answered but it didn’t put her off. She told him she worried. She told him she missed him. She wrote one obscenely dirty letter which Simon had been going to burn until Rhys got ahold of it and read it out loud to the squadron and had his ears boxed by Staff Sergeant Nicodemus Petty. After that Simon decided he couldn’t take it anymore. He wrote Agatha back and told her politely that he’d never meant for this to get serious. 

That had been, if he remembered right, about a month before he lost his hand.

 

Now with Penny’s books against his chest he went home and cracked _Havoc_ on the couch. It started badly. Even Simon as a self-proclaimed dunce could recognize that. He flipped it over and read the reviews which had gushed over the vibrant story and well-developed characters. The first sentence of the book was _They came for me just before dawn._

He called Penny and put her on speaker.

“Bunce,” she said.

“Is that how you answer the phone?”

“Si! Your number’s changed.”

“I’m reading one of your books.”

“Oh, Lord. Which one?”

_“Havoc,”_ he said. He didn’t actually know if it was _have-ick_ or _have-ock_ so he said it both ways to be safe. She didn’t say anything. Nervously he went on. “I’m only on the first page…I bought the others, though. I mean, I bought four. That was all the bookstore had.”

“Bookstore?”

He wished she didn’t sound so surprised. “Yeah.”

“Why were you in a bookstore?”

Here it came. He fiddled with the cover of _Havoc,_ which sported an aggressively shirtless man. The swell of the man’s arms reminded Simon a little of the nasty clerk. “Pen,” he said, trying to forget the clerk. “I saw Agatha.”

Silence. Then, “Oh, fuck.”

“I don’t think she saw me. But I didn’t know. So I ran. I mean—I—well, yeah. I ran into a bookstore.”

“Is she _following_ you?”

“I don’t know.” Agatha had wanted to ride for the US equestrian team. She had wanted to own a candy store in Washington DC. It seemed unlikely in the face of all of these dreams that she would have settled for coming back to the same state where she’d gone to boarding school. On the other hand, for all she knew, Simon was still in Afghanistan. The detonation hadn’t killed anyone and as a result had barely cropped up in the news. 

“But she didn’t go into the bookstore,” said Penny. She sounded tired. In junior year she had been the first one to warn Simon off of Agatha although of course it hadn’t done much good. 

“No.”

“Well.” There was a sigh. Simon sighed, too. He imagined Penny comfortable and round on the other end of the phone. Green hair—it was green this year—done up in a knot on the top of her head. She was probably wearing a shirt that said something about feminism or gay rights or underrepresented minorities or all of the above. “There’s not much you can do now, I guess.”

“Unless I reached out to her—”

“No, Simon.”

“No,” he agreed, seeing sense. He was never going to talk to Agatha Wellbelove again. Not after Rhys squinting at the letter and reading _I want to feel your hot pulsing—_ and then being unable to finish because he was laughing too hard. This was a memory Simon sometimes entertained when he wanted to truly scare himself into submission. “Okay.”

A pause. He could hear Penny breathing her big yoga breaths. “How was the bookstore, anyway?” she said after a moment.

“Oh, God, the guy who ran it was such an asshole.”

“I don’t think you _can_ be an asshole if you run a bookstore.”

“He was an asshole. He was the biggest asshole I’ve ever met. He had a London accent and—and he was ripped as hell—and he just kept making fun of my—inability to find things—”

“Ripped as hell?”

Simon flushed and opened _Havoc_ again, this time to the dust jacket. Apparently it was about a dystopian world in which people’s organs floated outside their bodies in climate-controlled tubes. The protagonist was named Lu and wore a fingerless black glove on her left hand. She was the only human left with her internal organs still intact inside her body cavities. 

“Si,” said Penny. “How objective was your perusal of this ripped-as-hell clerk?”

Simon flipped to a random page: 367. _He lowered his face to mine. Those jade-green eyes tore right through me, an instant before the searing heat of him overtook my lips._ “Very objective,” he said. “Purely for research purposes.” He was willing in the abstract to wonder if he was gay but Penny babbled so much about it that it had kind of lost its charm. Besides the clerk had not in any way been attractive. He was a _vampire,_ for God’s sake _._ Simon turned the page. _I was burning with need, my entrance flush with warmth and wet._ “Good God, Pen,” he said, slamming the book shut; “for all your social justice this book is about as textbook stereotypical as you can get.”

“Wait until the last fifteen pages,” said Penny, gleefully.

He flipped ahead and skimmed. _…had realized my true identity. I affixed the they/them pin to my chest where the binder flattened my breasts…Xavier was a painful memory in my rearview mirror…With Wren, I could feel real happiness, scorching in my center like arousal, hot and wet…When I held her heart and lungs and felt them slippery between my fingers, I saw a future brighter than our past._ “She’s a lesbian,” he said. 

“They’re sapphic,” corrected Penny. “Isn’t it rather nice, how they finally realize what they want and who they are?”

Simon had absolutely no problem with the LGBTQ community but he did have a problem with shoddy literature. He put _Havoc_ gingerly on the coffee table beside the remnants of his breakfast. He was a little disappointed but he supposed if it sold it sold.The shirtless man flexed up at him: _very objective. Purely for research purposes._ He shook his head. Penny was getting to him.

“Are you going to go back?”

“Go back to where?”

“The bookstore.”

“Probably not.”

“You should.”

“It wasn’t like he was _attractively_ ripped. It was more like, scary ripped. Like rip-your-head-off-ripped.”

“Like the Minotaur?”

The Minotaur had been their name for their Watford poli sci professor who stood upwards of six feet tall and had a barrel chest to match. His sideburns when uncombed looked just like horns. “No,” said Simon. “Listen, I’m not going back, okay?”

“Well, gosh, you don’t _have_ to. But maybe when I visit in the fall—”

“Good _bye,”_ said Simon pointedly, and hung up. A text buzzed in half a second later: _I love you, goofball._ He texted her back. _I love you too._

 

Two days later Simon found himself across from the same open-air brunch place he’d seen Agatha. He had told himself aloud all morning how horrible of an idea it was to try and look for her again but in the end he’d lost the battle and gone to indulge his curiosity. Anyway if he could get proof that she had followed him here then he would be able to get rid of her once and for all.

When he had failed to find her he wandered down the street with his hands in his pockets. It was the sort of half-hearted foggy morning which would blur in turn into dazzling sunlight by three o’clock. In the meantime it felt like a Netflix day. He was halfway through _Stranger Things_. He had parked down near the Indian restaurant at the end of the road; his Jetta flashed its silver trim at him.

“Hey. You.”

London accent.

_“Bugger.”_

“What does that even _mean?”_ said Simon, turning in annoyance to the bookstore clerk. “No actual British people say that, do they?”

The clerk was leaning out the door of the bookstore with his handsome muscular arms braced on either side of him. He was sans his eyeglasses today. His biceps now that they weren’t covered by a flannel seemed to be a lot tanner than the rest of his visible skin. Maybe he was a wrestler. _“I’m_ an actual British person,” he said, “and I say it. Come inside.”

Reluctantly Simon squeezed past him into the store. He had to admit it was nice; Billie Holiday crooned in the background, and there was a disposable cup of tea fragrant on the counter. The store was empty.

“Did you like the books?”

“They were terrible,” said Simon, surprised by his own frankness. “Except _The Dark Hart_ was sort of okay.”

“That one was my least favorite. It advertised itself as _tastefully gritty_ and ended up being more like chunks of grit.”

“What does that even mean?” Then, watching the clerk ease away from the door, “Why am I here?”

“I thought you quite liked her,” the clerk said, instead of a response.

“Penny? Yeah, sure. I mean—I love her. She’s my best friend. But she’s doing the wrong thing…She’s supposed to be an astrophysicist/therapist with a social justice channel.”

There was silence. The clerk picked up the cup of tea and sipped it. He looked a little more human today and Simon wondered idly if what he was drinking was actually hot blood. That was why he’d been lured in, Simon thought. To be _drained._ At least he’d told Penny he loved her. He took a cautious step towards the door.

“I’m Baz,” said the clerk.

“I—um.” Simon was overwhelmed. _“Baz?_ You’re making this up.”

“Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch.”

Simon almost fell over. “Good Lord. I’m Simon Snow.”

They shook hands, Simon putting his bad one behind his back. Baz almost crushed Simon’s fingers. Didn’t vampires get more strength after drinking blood? Simon craned his neck to try and get another sniff of the tea. It smelled like tea: Earl Gray. Bergamot.

“Why am I here?” said Simon again after a moment.

“I need you to buy more books. I haven’t sold one in three days.”

Simon scoffed. “Don’t you get a flat salary?”

“It’s not—” Baz looked legitimately sad. The expression on his features presented itself more as rugged scorn, but Simon was good at reading people and could see the hint of a frown pulling at Baz’s lips. He had very pale thin lips. “It’s failing,” said Baz. “I mean. The store.”

“But it’s a tourist town. Books sell like crazy.”

“There’s no glare on an e-reader. Not anymore.”

Simon rubbed his chin, feeling suddenly sorry for this strange mess of a vampire/wrestler/bookstore clerk. “Do you own this place?”

“Mostly. My sister Mordelia has a share.”

_“Mordelia?”_

“Listen—you were the first person in a few weeks to buy more than one book. Can’t you pick up that running book this time, or something? Just a couple of—fifteen dollars? Less?”

For the first time Simon realized Baz was wearing a faded shirt which said _Marines._ “Did you serve?” he said, pointing.

Baz glanced down at his chest, distracted. “No; my mum did. KIA fifteen years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” said Simon.

“’S all right. Been a while. Did you?”

“Yeah.”

Baz didn’t say anything else but he was looking at Simon’s bad hand where the metal turned to flesh.

“I wasn’t running,” said Simon, “last time, when I came in out of breath.”

“I didn’t think you had been. You looked too scared.”

“My ex-girlfriend—” Baz’s eyebrows had gone up. “—well, no, she was never really my girlfriend. Someone I—ah, slept with, one time—and it turned into—ah, anyway, she basically stalked me for a while—and I saw her at the brunch place up the road—”

“To be honest, I don’t really care how you got here,” said Baz over the top of his stumbled rant. “You bought four books.”

“And hated all of them.”

“Well, d’you want suggestions, this time?”

“What suggestions are you going to give me?” said Simon, warily.

Baz picked up the pen beside the cash register and scribbled something down on a pad of paper. He tore of the first sheet with his graceful white fingers and handed it to Simon. _Elspeth Morrison, Philippa Cash._ “Find these,” he said.

Simon found them. They were quirky, offbeat writers with unique styles and appropriate amounts of semicolons. Upon perusing several of the volumes he discovered that they were all about gay men. He glanced back towards the desk where Baz had his head bent over the computer. Was Baz trying to suggest something? —He ought to know, Simon thought, that once you call someone a bugger and insult their intelligence, hitting on them most likely won’t go over well. He picked up _Chained_ anyway. Another hardback. No wonder people didn’t buy books.

“Does it look interesting?” said Baz, taking out the little book-wand.

“Thrilling,” said Simon. It did. It was all about a clandestine gay relationship in the nineteenth century between a Catholic priest and an agnostic murderer. He tried to avoid Baz’s eyes as he fumbled for cash.

“Come back when you’re finished, and I’ll give you the sequel. It’s called Criminal.”

“Are you— _ah,”_ said Simon, painfully, and lost his nerve. He pressed his lips together to make it seem like he hadn’t said anything at all.

“Goodbye, Simon,” said Baz, smirking.

“Goodbye, Baz,” said Simon.

 

—I owe him nothing, Simon told himself as he hurried back to his car. Nothing. After the way he treated me, I should boycott his bookstore to make my point. I should—

In the front seat he let _Chained_ fall open on his lap. 

_“Don’t go yet,” Jules said. He had the gun in his lap and the tin of powder on the stand beside the bed. From where I stood looking at him, he seemed very small. “I’m almost done.”_

_“If I go now, I can say I didn’t know.”_

_“You’ve never been a self-preservationist, John.”_

_I hadn’t. Instead I sat down on the bed beside him and watched his slim fingers measure the powder and jam the bullet down into the chamber. He was working rather clumsily; he kept spilling powder on the bed and blotting it up again on his fingertips. Since he sometimes smoked to fall asleep he had to be careful not to leave any traces of the stuff behind._

_“You’re making me nervous,” he said._

_“Good,” I said, and pulled his slender form to me. He dropped the gun, which couldn’t have made a louder racket had it been loaded and cocked. His lips were hot and the taste of my skin was still fresh on his tongue._ Don’t go, _I told him silently. We didn’t say things like that, so I kept it to myself._

Three hours later, a police officer came by with a sticker for Simon’s window. She gave Simon a look through the windshield like she thought he was an idiot. Simon, teary-eyed from the devastation of the final chapter, was inclined to agree.

 

“Sequel,” he demanded the next day, slamming a fist onto the counter.

Baz already had it, under the cash register. It was quite a big thicker than _Chained,_ and cost several dollars more. Simon looked in brief guilt at the dwindling contents of his wallet, then bought it anyway. It had nothing to do with Baz. None of this had anything to do with Baz. It was just nice to rediscover the joy of reading books.

“I got a ticket for this,” said Simon, thumping the cover.

“For reading? Are they giving reading tickets, now?”

“No, you bugger—I sat in my car for three hours ’til I’d finished _Chained_.”

Baz was smiling. It was a real smile. If he had fangs they must have been retractable, Simon thought. _“Bugger,”_ said Baz. “You’re becoming a regular Brit.”

“Did you sell anything yesterday? Besides to me?”

“I did, actually…a boy came in and bought _Fifty Shades of Grey.”_

“And you had to check him out?”

“With the utmost dignity.”

“I don’t believe it. After what you said to me?”

“That was a bad day,” said Baz, but he didn’t even sound defensive. He sounded amused. Simon was awestruck by the exact fifty-fifty split of times he wanted to put his fist through Baz’s face and times he wanted to grin at him and have him recommend a book. “I even offered him discount handcuffs.”

_“Baz!”_ said Simon, horrified, and Baz laughed a long nasty delighted laugh. “You didn’t—you didn’t. I mean, surely—”

“You’ll never know, will you,” said Baz. He handed Simon his receipt. This time their hands brushed: Simon’s good one, powder-burned, and Baz’s long-fingered one. Simon’s bad wrist twinged in sudden sympathy at the touch. “Get going so you can finish and come back for the prequel.”

 

On Instagram that night there was a picture of Penny kissing a short-haired blond person on the lips. Simon spammed her with so many DM’s that his phone crashed and he had to call her sheepishly from the landline instead.

“Their name is Micah,” said Penny. “They’re a barista at the Starbucks. They asked me out a week ago.”

“You _talked_ to me a week ago.” 

“I didn’t want to get my hopes up…”

“Looks like your hopes are pretty damn far up.”

There was a giggle and Simon winced. He was ecstatic for her but giggling was embarrassing no matter who did it, and doubly embarrassing if the giggler was steadfast Penelope Bunce. He clicked the power button on his phone uselessly once more.

“I’m happy,” said Penny.

“I’m glad. You deserve it. They’re cute.”

“Aren’t they? I like their cheekbones.”

“Good kisser?”

“Hot… _damn.”_

“Okay, okay,” said Simon, “good to know.” Then he giggled himself. It was rather horrible.

“What about you?” 

“What about me?”

“Mr. Rip-Your-Head-Off-Ripped. The Cum Clerk.”

Simon had to sit down at that. He coughed and as if on cue his phone screen lit up. There was a Facebook notification and he swiped left to open it. “I’m not—” he said. “He’s not—” 

“But you went back.”

“Just to get some books. _Chained—Criminal—”_

“Aren’t those both terrifically gay? And historically inaccurate? Wasn’t it the LGBTQ literature controversy of the year?”

The Facebook notification was from Agatha. Simon, his stomach going cold, watched as another message appeared. _Hey, Si…I’ve really missed you…would love the chance to catch up…saw you the other day in town!!…What a coincidence…give me a call at…_

“How have I never blocked Agatha,” he said. His throat hurt.

_“Agatha?”_

“Agatha. She just Facebook-messaged me.”

Penny sounded disgusted. “Block her, then.”

Simon did. 

“You didn’t go back to the bookstore to find her, right? Like, you didn’t go back to wherever you saw her in town?”

“No,” lied Simon. 

“Then just stay out her way, and you’ll be fine. And keep me updated on the Bookstore Beast?”

“Baz,” said Simon, quietly. “His name is Baz.”

 

In the end it was very simple: the bullet had entered low down in his palm and severed the median nerve just above the wrist. The doctors had gone on—in excruciating detail—but Simon hadn’t paid attention. What was important was that they couldn’t save the hand.

When David Snow heard, he messaged Simon on Instagram. It was his first correspondence with his son in nearly a year. _I’d like you to know,_ he wrote, _that I am not in the least shocked or sympathetic. You threw your hand away for an emptydream of patriotism you should have let lesser men pursue. You’re no son of mine._ Simon, unsurprised, sent him a picture of his new prosthetic. Penny had painted it with flames and they’d manipulated the middle finger so it stuck straight up. 

After the hospital there was training to live one-handed. There was therapy. There were mantras and repetitions: —I value, I matter, I am enough. Simon kept up with his squadron even through the arduous process of finding an apartment and a job. Three men had been killed in the same skirmish Simon had lost his hand in, including Staff Sergeant Nicodemus Petty. For a while, Simon wrote therapeutic letters back and forth with Nico’s sister Ebb who was a state representative in Michigan.

“I’m moving to California,” said Penny while he was writing one. She was on his couch, painting her nails pink and yellow and blue. Her shirt said, _I’ll see how it PANs out._ At this point she was dating Trixie Walton who was an undergrad at the University of Washington and had attended the same STEM camp as Penny after senior year.

“Like—California, California?” said Simon. It was an idiotic response but he was having trouble understanding her. He had not yet mastered washing his hair one-handed. She couldn’t just _leave._

“Yes.”

“Why? The fuck?”

“For the sun.”

“It’s sunny here—Penny, people don’t _do that._ They don’t move places _for the sun._ That’s not a thing.”

“It is _not_ sunny here,” said Penny firmly. She was right; on little Rines Island where they had settled after Simon’s rehab it stormed more than anything else. In the summer it was oppressive. “Not legitimately sunny, anyway. Anyway, you need some independence, Si. And so do I. I’m breaking up with Trix.”

Simon felt like crying. “You’re always telling me what I need.”

“Which is exactly why you could use some independence. Can you get me a paper towel?”

She moved three months later with all her stuff done up in boxes that filled exactly one-third of the bed of her vintage turquoise pickup truck. Simon couldn’t take time off from his position as a night-shift security guard at the Middlesex Savings Bank, but he rode with her out to the Massachusetts border and then kissed her on the cheek and let her go. He hitchhiked back with a frenetic old lady and her equally frenetic little dog.

Penny’s first postcard had a whale on it. She’d seen one, she said. She asked how Simon’s rehab was doing even though she’d asked this at least once a day over any of the various social media sites they were both on. He sent her back a postcard with a Minuteman on it and told her not to worry about him. He did, after all, need his independence. At this she got very huffy and wouldn’t write him back for close to half a month.

 

“I’ve got two more for you,” said Baz. “They just came in.” Today he was wearing a Rines Island shirt with the sleeves cut off, exhibiting his shoulders which were so large they had almost become entities of their own. The cup of tea in front of him was steaming in little silver bursts between his face and Simon’s across the desk.

“Of Philippa’s?”

“Elspeth’s. _Thirty Days_ and _December.”_

“I can’t buy any more,” said Simon with regret. “I’m—well, I can’t afford it.”

It looked for a second almost like Baz was disappointed and then his features rearranged themselves into his usual cool smile. His shoulders were even tanner than his biceps. “Never mind, then,” he said, then, voice dropping, “We've had a few more customers in, the past few days. We’re back up to fighting weight.”

“You must have really charmed him,” said Simon.

“Who?”

“The _Fifty Shades_ guy. He clearly told all his friends. Has he been back in?”

“Not yet.”

“He will. I don’t think you don’t buy _Fifty Shades_ at a bookstore unless you want to catch the owner’s eye.”

The door jangled. Simon caught the smell before he even saw the telltale coil of blond hair: jasmine and stale wine. His heart thudded in his breast. He ducked back behind the biography shelf across from the desk as Agatha unwound her scarf and gave Baz a proprietary little smile. _God._ What was she doing here? Simon telegraphed his shock toBaz: —Don’t let her see me.

“Good morning,” said Baz. His voice was frigid.

“Good morning.” Agatha sounded breathier than she had the last time Simon had heard her speak. She crossed in front of the shelf where Simon stood flattened, and he slid himself back through the books until he could peep around the edge. “I was just looking for someone, actually. My boyfriend—Simon Snow? Curly hair, blue eyes—yea tall.” The height she was measuring was about three inches shorter than Simon actually was.

“Sorry,” said Baz, not like he was. “Haven’t seen anyone like that.”

“Oh, but I’d so appreciate—we were eating brunch, and had a fight, and he came running down this way. I saw him go in.”

—Liar, thought Simon, oh, _liar._ He wanted to storm out from behind the bookshelves and shake his fist at her. He wasn’t sure what good that would do but it would certainly settle the pit of unrest in his stomach. 

“I was just back making tea,” said Baz, “but you’re welcome to look around.”

Agatha turned in a flounce of blond hair and Simon ducked around the opposite shelf back up to the desk. —Musical chairs, he thought. She went in odd dainty steps across the rug to the foot of the loft stairs. When Simon turned back to the counter, Baz had the partition open. “Come in,” he said very quietly. Simon squeezed himself through and squatted down behind the desk. After a moment, Baz dropped a torn-off sheet of paper by his side. 

_Who the fuck is that?_

_NOT my girlfriend,_ Simon wrote.

“Excuse me,” he could hear Agatha saying somewhere near the back of the store She even had the little quiver to her voice. “Have you seen a curly-haired guy? About this tall?”

_She’s the stalker you slept with?_

_Something like that._

_She’s very good-looking._

_Masks a dark soul. I led her on, but she’s…gone too far._

_She’s making you out to be a dwarf._

_I KNOW._

“Only we had a fight..and I want to tell him I’m sorry…”

There was a hissing sound; Simon glanced up. Above him Baz was pouring tea. _Is that for me?_ he wrote.

_No, for the other bloke I have behind my counter._ A pause, and then a new sheet. _You owe me one, Snow. Several, actually._

_BLOKE? Really?_

Baz made a face and handed him the tea. It was chamomile, which was Simon’s favorite, and it almost burned his hand. Simon juggled it back and forth for a moment before deeming it safe enough to drink. Even then it seared on the tip of his tongue.

“I couldn’t find him,” said Agatha, very close.

“That’s a shame,” said Baz. He was standing almost directly over where Simon pressed into the bottom of the desk. If Simon looked up he would be looking at a part of Baz he wasn’t sure he was ready to study yet. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more of a help.”

“I am, too,” said Agatha. Meaningfully.

“Would you like to buy anything?”

“No, that’s all right. Here’s my number…will you let me know if you see him?”

At this point Simon’s grip faltered and he spilled his tea all over Baz’s brown leather shoes. A portion of it splashed up onto the exposed skin of Baz’s ankles. _“Blimey,”_ said Baz, very fast, and then, “Yes, of course. Thank you.”

The bells on the door tinkled again and as Agatha made her exit Baz dropped with a sharp breath to the ground beside Simon. His leg was turning red; Simon groped helplessly for a paper towel. “I’m _sorry,”_ he said, when Baz glared at him. “I slipped.”

“She’s a bloody nightmare,” said Baz forcefully. 

“Isn’t she? For Christ’s sake—I haven’t seen her in two years and she’s claiming I’m her boyfriend.”

Baz was watching Simon dab at the column of his ankle, a strange expression on his face. Too late Simon realized his prosthetic, flames and narrow fingers and all, was pressed up against Baz’s calf. He yanked it quickly away. “You’ll want to—”

Baz took the towel from him.

“Thank you,” said Simon. He felt sort of flustered and also like he had dunked his head underwater and was still blinking chlorine out of his eyes. “I mean. For hiding me.”

All Baz said was, “You owe me one.”

 

_You have ONE new friend request from Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch_

_Accept/Deny Request_

 

Simon: _Oh, are we friends now? I hadn’t realized._

Baz: _You’re an idiot, Snow._

Simon: _:) Duly noted._

Baz: _Hey, it’s been a few days since you’ve come in._

Simon: _Well, I met this guy in the street…He said he’d been offered discount handcuffs by you, and it kind of scared him off. I figured maybe it would be better to just stay away. Who knows what you’ll do next?_

Baz: _Kinky._

Simon: _I’ll be there tomorrow. Save Elspeth’s new stuff for me._

 

There were two to-go cups of tea on the counter this morning. One was Earl Gray; one was chamomile. Simon took the Earl Gray just to see what Baz would do.

“I hate chamomile,” said Baz, but he picked it up and took a sip anyway.

“It’s not posh enough for you,” said Simon. “Posh? Is that British enough? Is that the right word?”

_Thirty Days_ was about a guy who had to scrounge up a date to his sister’s wedding in order to not disappoint his old-money conservative family.He ended up going with one of his male business partners just to piss them off. It was cutesy and small-town and not at all the sort of thing Simon usually read. _December,_ on the other hand, chronicled the lives of two male lovers during the Salem witch trials.

“This is quite a spread,” said Simon, apprehensively.

Baz was certain. “You’ll like them.”

“Have you read them already?”

“Over the weekend. _Thirty Days_ gets very hot. I probably shouldn’t tell you that, but it does.”

Simon felt his face warm. “Hot—”

“As in, passionate gay sex.”

At this, a woman who had been shopping the cooking section gathered her handbag and exited smartly. Baz watched her go with a faint sardonic smile on his lips.

“I thought,” said Simon, “that it didn’t matter what you said to customers, because they already have their minds made up when they come in.”

“That holds truer for some customers than others.”

Simon took the books; both of them. His wallet was at this point so thin that he was beginning to worry half-seriously about the rent. As Baz turned to grab a bag for him, Simon caught a flash of a rainbow patch on the back pocket of his jeans. —So this, Simon thought, is a thing. The gay books. He was still trying to arrange his face into an appropriate expression by the time Baz had turned around again.

“You all right?” said Baz.

“Spectacular,” said Simon. His hand was shaking a little as he took the bag. “Look—Baz. What exactly do I owe you.” He lost inflection on the question.

“I don’t know…what do you want to owe me?”

Simon stuck his prosthetic in his pocket because Baz’s gaze kept flickering down to it. He felt slightly unhinged. “Drinks,” he said. “If that’s—if you want drinks. At Sully’s.” That was the bar near the north end where most of the college kids hung out. Technically speaking, Simon supposed, they were both about the same age as college kids. “My treat.”

Baz cocked an eyebrow. “Tonight?”

“Sure,” said Simon. “Or. Sometime.”

“Seven-thirty tonight, then,” said Baz. He held out his hand, and Simon shook it. This time he managed to hold his own in Baz’s aggressive grip. “And I’d like to hear your story. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Also,” said Baz. He was smiling now, a dangerous sort of leer. For a second Simon thought he did see fangs. “Bring _Thirty Days.”_

 

“It’s a date.”

“It’s not a date.”

“It’s a date.”

“It’s not a date.”

“It’s a date.”

Simon sank down in the kitchen chair and began repeatedly bashing his head into the table. For the past several hours he had been eating Girl Scout cookies by the handful to a degree which if Baz had been watching probably would have made him cancel on drinks tonight.

“It’s a date,” said Penny again. She was on video call, brushing her hair out over the bathtub. Apparently she had just been out playing lacrosse with Micah and so her bangs were full of crud. “This isn’t ninth grade. If someone asks you out, they’re asking you out.”

“But he didn’t ask me out.”

“But he said yes when you did.”

Simon gave up. He ate another Girl Scout cookie: a Samoa. The girl who sold them to him had been about three feet tall and full of excitement about the mermaid tail she was going to receive if she met her quota. Simon had asked her how many more boxes she needed. Really it was no wonder why his wallet was so slim.

He hadn’t told Penny about the fact that Baz had asked him to bring the book with passionate gay sex. He hadn’t decided whether it was a joke or not. Anxiously he finished the Samoa and scraped the caramel residue from his teeth. —God. He needed to stop. Penny had started to sing _Hotel California_ and in the middle of the chorus he got up and put the box on the highest shelf he could reach.

“Such a lovely place…such a lovely place…”

“What do I _wear?”_ said Simon. He had just caught sight of himself in the hall mirror. His hair was sticking up in every direction and he was wearing an _Army_ T-shirt with inconvenient holes over each nipple. He couldn’t remember if the holes had been of natural origin or if Penny had cut them for a prank.

“The gray shirt I got you for Christmas, jeans, Converse.”

“Really?”

“You’re going to Sully’s, not Momofuku Ko.”

“What if he wears something nicer?”

“It won’t matter. You’ll both have taken each other’s clothes off by the end of the night.”

_Had_ he forgotten and told her about _Thirty Days?_ He was mortified; he could feel the color leaching inch by inch into his cheeks. It was almost six o’clock. “I’m going to hang up,” he said. “I can’t talk to you anymore.”

Penny sounded like she wouldn’t have expected anything less. “Have fun on your date,” she told him. Part of her hair was still in a coagulated lump around her head, so that she looked like half of an Indian Diana Ross.

“It’s not a date,” said Simon.

Penny grinned and hung up on him. A few minutes later his phone buzzed and he swiped left to see her text: _It’s a date._ He sent her the same middle-finger picture of his prosthetic he’d sent his father two years ago. 

 

Sully’s was packed but they found a spot in the corner by the speakers which were playing Justin Timberlake at top volume. After a good amount of deliberation Simon had brought _Thirty Days_ as it fit unobtrusively into the pocket of his coat.

“It’s loud,” he said, when they had settled themselves into the roar of _Can’t Stop the Feeling._

“What?” said Baz from across the table.

“It’s _loud.”_

_“Oh.”_

A waitress came by in scuffed-up jeans and a haircut like something out of the eighties. Simon ordered a beer. Baz asked for some immensely fancy cocktail called the Foxy Flap. Then there was some more silence. Simon fidgeted and wished they had waited for a better table with a little less Justin Timberlake.

_“Snow.”_

“What?”

Baz was slouching onto the Formica tabletop. “Did you bring it?”

Simon’s face went hot. He reached into his jacket and pulled out _Thirty Days._ The cover looked harmless enough—hands clasping in front of an idealistic ocean view. Nothing overtly passionate or gay or sexy to be found there. Baz took it from him and flipped to a page near the back. In the background, Justin Timberlake cut out.

_“We went up to my room,”_ read Baz, softly. Then he snapped the book shut.

“Tease,” said Simon. His heart was going very fast.

“You don’t want me to read it _here…_ ” Baz handed it back across the table, folding his fingers around Simon’s grip. “Tell me about yourself, Simon Snow. There ought to be a bit more to this than diving right into sex scenes.”

The waitress dropped off their drinks. Baz’s was orange.

“Um—” said Simon. “What about me?”

“Where’d you go to school?”

“I didn’t. I mean, not college. I went to Watford for high school.”

“So you’re one of those private school brats.”

Simon glanced up to make sure Baz was teasing. When he had determined he was, he took a sip of his beer to hide his flush. “I guess. Except I always knew I wanted to join the military. From freshman year. I’m kind of an idiot. Anyway, I—ah, I swore in, and then I shipped out to Afghanistan a few months later.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-two, now. I was eighteen.”

“And I’m guessing—”

“No, it didn’t end well. We got caught in a skirmish my staff sergeant hadn’t reckoned with.” He motioned to the general point on his prosthetic where he’d been shot. The fake was a fair amount skinnier than his real hand had been, so it was hard to be exact. “That was that.”

“Honorably discharged?”

“There wasn’t really anything honorable about it. They had a whole bunch of new kids lined up to replace me.” Simon felt old. He felt, for the first time, like a veteran. The Army was doing everything it possibly could to insist that he wasn’t a veteran, so they could deny him the services of one, but he _was._ Here he was, in a dive bar, talking to this bookstore owner about his _Army years._ Well—Army months. But it all came out about the same. He took a swallow of beer to mask his confusion.

“You grew up here?”

“No. They have a good rehab center, and Penny—ah, Penelope Bunce—her family had a house out here, so she was going to move anyway.I was born in Boston.”

There was a pause. The waitress stopped by and asked them if they wanted anything to eat, and Simon, feeling self-conscious, ordered a basket of fries. 

“What about you,” he said, when she had gone.

“I’m boring.”

“I bet you’re not.”

“No, really. Apart from my mother—” Here Simon looked away, sober. “I’m just a down-on-his-luck gay bookstore owner. Disappointment to my family and all.”

“Well, that’s something,” said Simon, playing for lightness. Something small and exciting was happening in the pit of his stomach. He had of course seen the rainbow patch, but this was _explicit_ proof. 

“Yes…Of course it was all very dramatic at the time, when I came out. My father said all sorts of things.”

Simon knew how this worked. “I haven’t spoken to my father in about two years.”

“That’s something we’ve got in common, then.”

The waitress set down their fries and Simon hurriedly thanked her. He was feeling very odd and anxious watching Baz look at him. He took a fry and bit the top off so the inside steamed.

“Has she tried to talk to you again?”

Simon almost choked. “What—who? Agatha? No. I mean—not since this morning.”

“But before that?”

“She sent me a Facebook message and I blocked her.”

“Has she been…chasing you for long?”

“It’s been kind of weird,” said Simon. “Like, it wasn’t always stalking. Or, like—maybe it isn’t even. Maybe I’m just overreacting? But ah—I slept with her right before I was sworn in, and then she started writing me letters once I’d shipped out. Which was—nice, at first. Having someone that wrote to me. Except it all got more and more intense, and she sent—pictures, and a—ah, something I didn’t want shared with my squad-mates—”

Baz was shaking his head.

“And she has no connection to Rines. So I’m figuring—I mean, I don’t know. I think I need to talk to her, actually. Penny said to just block her and all, but—I think I need some kind of closure.”

“I’ll go with you, if you like,” said Baz. He was very straight-faced.

“Ah—really?”

“Sure.”

Simon bit into another fry while he considered. Baz was looking at him in a way which if Simon didn’t know better might be described as _tender._ He felt simultaneously overwrought and like he wanted Baz to read him the sex scene right now. If it wasn’t read at some point tonight, he thought he might burst. “Thanks,” he said, “thanks,” and then, wildly offering the platter, “Fry?”

 

When they had finished the fries and a drink apiece, Simon got into the front seat of Baz’s car and they drove to Baz’s place. He and Mordelia shared a beautiful ramshackle old cottage on the western shore. For all his claims of being down-on-his-luck, the house must have cost a fortune. 

“My stepmum,” said Baz, when he caught Simon looking. “She thinks my dad’s mad to disapprove of me. I told her I could support myself, but she just paid off Mordelia instead.”

They went inside. Mordelia was at her boyfriend’s for the night. From the living room Simon could see all the way to the Cape, and in the kitchen there was a full wall’s spread worth of pictures of Baz as a kid. The gaunt, big-eyed girl constantly beside him must have been Mordelia.

“Oh, God,” said Baz. “I’d forgotten about these.”

“It’s endearing,” said Simon, smiling.

“It’s horrible. Mordie made it. Just try not to look. Tea?”

They made tea and Simon had a fruity herbal kind which Baz had allegedly been trying to get rid of for the past two years. He thought it was good, and said so. Baz rolled his eyes. 

“I think you still have my book,” ventured Simon, cautiously, when they had gathered their mugs and gone out on the deck.

“That’s right.”

Simon didn’t say anything for a while. He was having trouble regulating his breath. When he spared a glance towards Baz he saw that Baz was looking at him very intensely with the starlight playing off his long high-bridged nose. “Would you like me to read some,” said Baz. He had taken off his sweatshirt and was wearing a black T-shirt which read, _Straight Outta The Closet._ Simon wondered if Penny knew this particular shirt existed.

“Some of—”

“Some of _Thirty Days.”_

“I don’t know,” said Simon, nervously. Now that the moment had come he really wasn’t sure. He hadn’t entertained a romantic interest since Agatha three years ago. “Are you going to be horrible about it?”

“Horrible?”

Simon tried to straighten his shirt. “You know what I—”

“No,” said Baz. His voice was gentle. “I won’t be horrible about it.”

“Okay,” said Simon.

Baz took out _Thirty Days_ and flipped back to the page where he had started to read aloud at Sully’s. He cleared his throat. “Where was I?” he said.

Simon remembered word-for-word. _“We went up to my room.”_

_“We went up to my room. The bed seemed too intimidating, so we sat on the floor. Now that we had both decided to do this, we were shaky and afraid. Virgins in every sense of the word. After a while of just sitting there, trying not to look at each other, I went to the boombox and turned on_ Black Magic Woman, _by Fleetwood Mac.”_

“Good taste,” said Simon. His mouth was dry.

“D’you like blues?”

“I like everything. But especially blues.”

_“ ‘Are you ready?’ Luke said, looking at me._

_“In lieu of a response I leaned forward and kissed him. It was as if something sharp and aggressive had started in my stomach: something that clawed itself lower and lower as we moved closer together on the floor. We kissed until we had no breath. When I finally pulled back, his lips were swollen, and I could feel mine hot and tender just the same._

_“He caught an arm under my shoulders and one across my chest, and laid me down on the floor. ‘All right?’ he said, and I nodded. He straddled me—_ Simon?”

“Unh,” said Simon. He was concentrating on not getting an erection. 

“I don’t have to—”

Simon reached out and put his prosthetic hand over Baz’s. He made a point of not looking at Baz, but he could hear Baz’s sharp intake of breath, and then the slow way he let it out. After a moment he dared a glance over. Baz was moving his fingers in small tidy circles across the back of Simon’s hand.

“Can you feel it?”

“No. There aren’t any touch receptors. If you push, I can kind of feel it moving where it joins my wrist.”

There was another quiet moment. Someone down the beach was yelling drunkenly and there was a series of quick repeated splashes, like several heavy somethings had been thrown into the water. Baz kept stroking the backs of Simon’s knuckles and the beginnings of the swirling flame Penny had spent so much time planning out.

“You can keep reading,” said Simon. He had an erection but he had decided it didn’t matter very much as it had already been established that this was not a business venture.

“Are you quite sure?”

_“Quite._ You bloody wanker.”

Baz scoffed and removed his hand from Simon’s. Although Simon couldn’t feel the exact moment the touch let off, it did remind him of how it felt when people in a crowd brushed against your clothes and then moved away. A kind of fleeting absence. —Come back, he thought, ridiculously. And then, like giving himself a brisk shake —This is the idiot who made fun of me in a bookstore. And, —This is the idiot who recommended gay books and hid me behind his counter and made me chamomile tea.

_“He straddled me and began in slow increments to shed his shirt. Meanwhile I worked on biting the places his hands touched._

_“ ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, laughing, when I had covered his entire torso in little reddening nips. He flattened himself against me so that I felt the bulge in his jeans press the same place mine was. I lost track of my breaths and choked on one. ‘Okay,’ he said again._

_“I couldn’t get my shirt off—”_

This time Simon reached for Baz with his good hand. The book thudded to the deck and in the next moment Baz had Simon in his lap, so Simon’s knees were jammed on either side of Baz’s. Simon wasn’t sure what to do with his hands. He settled for flattening them both against Baz’s impressive chest.

Baz tasted like Earl Gray tea. He tasted like the faint salt off the French fries. For the first time Simon understood why people wrote such sappy and terrible books. It was incredibly difficult to describe the way it felt someone you had been wanting to kiss for as long as you had known them.

“I’m gay,” said Simon, when Baz broke away to breathe. He felt uneven and tearful and ecstatic and gay. He squashed his cheek against Baz’s forehead so the bump of Baz’s nose nudged at his chin. 

“Really,” said Baz. 

“We’re not going to finish the scene.”

“No, probably not.”

“All the books you gave me were gay.”

“Well,” said Baz. “There’s a reason for that.”

Simon clung to him and closed his eyes.

“You’re like—what are those things called? The fuzzy things, on branches.”

“Sloths?”

“No, the other ones.”

“Koalas.”

“That’s right. You’re a koala.”

“I like you,” said Simon. “You smell good.”

“Thank you.”

“Did you know when I first saw you I thought you were a vampire?”

Baz was indignant. “Everyone _always_ thinks that. _Always._ My best friend from high school just told me the other day that he was always secretly checking for fangs.”

“Maybe you are,” said Simon. “Maybe later tonight you’re going to _bite me.”_

“I think that could probably be arranged.”

“Will you turn me into a vampire so we can go on romantic blood-sucking missions around the island?”

Baz turned his face into Simon’s neck. Somewhere, Penny was screaming. She was dancing around and screaming and hitting things in delirious excitement for how right she’d been. Simon would be a gracious sport. —I will, he thought, I will. “Romantic is a tall order, Snow,” said Baz.

“Then I thought you were a wrestler.”

“Because of my handsome physique?”

“Because your shoulders were tan.”

“I hate to burst your bubble, but wrestling is an indoor sport.”

“Your handsome physique scrambled my brain,” said Simon, and kissed him. When he pulled away he could feel a bit of saliva on his chin. First the Girl Scout cookies, now this. In the middle of thinking about how he could subtly wipe the drool off, Baz leaned forward and licked it. Simon wondered if this was how it felt to be a religious person and find God. 

“You’re an idiot.”

“A bloody one.”

“A very bloody one. But vampires like blood.”

“That was bad,” said Simon. 

“I know.”

“Can we go inside?”

“D’you promise not to look at Mordelia’s Wall of Shame?”

“Only if you promise to make sweet vampire love to me.”

“Good God,” said Baz. “Let the neighbors know in a little more detail, please.”

They went inside in a laughing drunken tangle of arms and legs and Simon walking backwards up the stairs so he could keep kissing Baz. At the top of the stairs there was a spectacular array of bedrooms, all done in dark dramatic colors—like, as Simon pointed out to Baz, bat caves, or Gothic palaces. Baz’s room was the darkest and most dramatic of them all. His bed had gargoyles on it. 

“Your bed has gargoyles on it,” said Simon. He couldn’t stop giggling. He had only had one beer, so this must be whatever alcohol was in Baz’s kisses. 

“I know. I wish it didn’t.”

“They’re sort of nice. I mean. Sort of.”

“Not really.”

“No, not really.”

Baz put Simon flat on his back on the bed.

“You look good from this angle,” said Simon.

“Thank you.”

“And from this one. And—oh. That’s—”

Baz turned around and raised an eyebrow. He had removed his shirt and underneath on his left shoulder blade there was an intricate tattoo of a woman in a Marines dress uniform. It must have taken hours.

“Your mom,” said Simon; “your mum, I mean.”

“Yeah.” Suddenly self-conscious. “Is it very weird?”

“Not weird at all. Can I—”

Baz sat on the bed and Simon ran the fingers of his good hand over the ink. The woman was rendered in perfect detail: the stern shape of her mouth, the dark bun her hair made. He grasped Baz’s shoulder and pulled him onto the bed so they lay side by side.

“Come here, koala,” said Baz, and Simon did.

 

In the morning after they had peed (separately) and showered (separately) and made a little more sweet vampire love (together) and showered again (together), there was a DM waiting on Simon’s phone.

Agatha: _Si, can we talk?_

Simon: _What do you want to talk about?_

Agatha: _We need to clear some stuff up. I don’t want to do it this way. Can we meet at the bookstore?_

 

She was waiting for him when he walked in with a latte from up the street. Baz was behind the counter but he also glanced up at the bells and gave Simon a look which meant he thought this was a terrible idea but had his back anyway.

“Hi,” said Agatha.

“Hey,” said Simon. He was deeply uncomfortable. He juggled the latte, then set it down and stuck his prosthetic in his pocket. He hadn’t looked at her full-on like this for about three and a half years.

“Can we—”

They went up to the loft. Simon sat in one of the beanbags facing towards the desk where he could periodically make eye contact with Baz and assure him things were all right. —If they turn out to be, he thought. Agatha perched on the edge of a child’s plastic chair.

“I want to start by apologizing,” she said. 

“That’s a new one,” said Simon. He couldn’t help himself.

She blinked several times in a row. “That was uncalled for.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Me, too. I should have realized—I thought you wanted a relationship. I shouldn’t have pushed like that, though, even if you had.”

Simon was silent. He was beginning to realize a few things.

“And I promise—Si, I’m not stalking you, or—my friend Minty’s got a beach house here, and she invited me out for the summer. But I saw you—I was eating brunch up the street—”

“I didn’t write you back,” said Simon.

Agatha looked guilty. “Yeah. I know.”

“No. I mean—well.” Baz had raised an eyebrow, so Simon raised both in return. Agatha half-twisted in her seat to see what was going on. “Ah,” said Simon, drawing her attention back to him. “How were you s’posed to know what I wanted? If I didn’t write you back?”

“Well—”

“And then thinking you were stalking me, and blocking you on Facebook, and _hiding_ from you—”

“Hiding from me?”

“Ah—” Baz was definitely concerned now. Simon raised his eyebrows several times hurriedly to indicate he had this covered. “You came in, and I hid behind the counter because I had been, ah, complaining about you to the clerk. But—you said I was your boyfriend.”

“The clerk was going to think I was a creepy stalker if I just asked—”

“We thought you were a creepy stalker anyway.”

“Well, at that point I was. Sort of. I _had_ seen you go in. And you’d blocked me. But I just wanted to talk.”

“We’re talking,” said Simon, “now.” He felt as if several heavy weights were removing themselves in increments from his chest. 

“We are. And isn’t it better?”

Baz came up the loft stairs. He had a lanyard ring of keys around his neck and there was a little smudge of something next to his mouth. He sat down next to Simon and Simon wiped the smudge off for him. “Just checking in,” said Baz. He was not-quite smiling. Agatha looked from Simon to Baz. “It’s almost lunchtime.”

“We’re okay,” said Simon.

“Are you two—?” said Agatha.

Simon glanced at Baz. “Kind of.”

“Kind of?” said Baz. _“I’d_ say so. It’s nice to meet you; I’m Baz.”

“She’s not all bad,” said Simon, regretfully, as Agatha and Baz shook hands. “A lot of it was actually me.”

“This is surreal,” said Agatha. “You’re dating?” Simon prepared himself to say something snappy, but she just shook her head and grinned. It was a tentative grin but it was a grin all the same. “Oh my God. And—and—Baz? knows everything? About us?”

“From a slightly biased perspective,” said Simon. “I’m really sorry.”

“No, Si, I am. I mean, maybe we both should be. But I am. A lot. Because—ah, the letter above all else was inexcusable.”

“My staff sergeant heard it.”

Agatha closed her eyes. “Yeah.”

“But,” said Simon. He put out his hand and found Baz’s and Baz gave his fingers a small encouraging squeeze. “Now that I think about it, it was kind of funny.”

“Funny?”

“Well, it read like bad porn. And it wasn’t in the least sexy, but it was very entertaining.”

Agatha put her hands over her face.

“So I appreciate the effort,” said Simon. He waited until she had put her hands down, and then he smiled at her. She looked at him rather horrified and then grudgingly began to smile too. “But I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you not to do it again.”

“Oh, Si—”

They stood up and hugged. It was more like something out of a bad coming-of-age novel than anything else. Simon thought of _Havoc_ and how everything was resolved hastily into an LGBTQ sermon in the last fifteen pages. As if Baz had read his mind he started humming the theme from _High School Musical_ and Simon broke away to swat him.

“He’s annoying,” said Agatha, laughing and sniffing. Her mascara was a mess.

“He is,” said Simon.

“I am,” agreed Baz.

But despite being an annoyance he ended up selling her four books—hardbacks. When she had gone Simon unblocked her on Facebook and sent her a message which just said, _We’re all in this together_ with some music notes _._ He felt that they had both apologized enough.

 

“Can I take this shirt,” said Simon.

“Which shirt?”

Baz was in the bathroom shaving. Simon had been a little surprised that he shaved. He supposed that was a weird thing to be surprised about, but there _were_ sometimes just those people who seemed to be incapable of growing scruff.

“This gay one,” said Simon. “It’s very gay.”

“I have a lot of gay shirts.”

“The rainbow one.”

“That really narrows things down, thanks.”

“The one with a literal rainbow on it.”

Baz snorted and then yelped as he cut himself. “That’s about the only one I’ve got that _isn’t_ explicitly gay.”

Simon took it and put it on. It was, predictably, about three inches too long for him. His stomach pushed out in the middle of it in a small interrogatory bulge. The shirt didn’t look like that on Baz. “It’s weird on me,” he said.

“Let me see.”

So Simon went into the bathroom—Baz called it the loo—and Baz put down the razor and looked at him appraisingly. After a moment or two he opened his arms and Simon went into them and put his head against Baz’s chest. He heard Baz pick up the razor again and the careful drag of it as he shaved over Simon’s head. “You’re going to slit your throat,” said Simon.

“I am a master of precision shaving.”

“You’re a vacuous toffee-nosed malodorous pervert.”

The razor slipped and Baz squeaked.

“You just squeaked.”

“I did not.”

“Yes, you did. I made a Monty Python reference and you squeaked.”

“I _yelped.”_

“Because that’s so much better.”

Baz set down the razor and ran a hand through Simon’s curls. “You look good in my shirt,” he said. 

“But it’s _weird_ on me.”

“No it’s not.”

“I’m all bulgy.”

“You’re adorable. I like it.”

“You like me being bulgy?”

“I like _you.”_

“I’m going to try a different shirt. Because you’re not being helpful.”

“I’m too busy being incapable of seeing myself in the mirror.”

Simon looked in the mirror. They were both there. Baz’s jaw was bleeding and Simon looked bulgy in his shirt. Despite these flaws they were both smiling. Simon widened his smile and watched it widen in turn in the mirror. Then he gave Baz bunny ears.

“I’m not sure why we’re together,” said Baz, studying the bunny ears as if he was going to eat them.

“Because you seduced me with your vampire charms?”

“Got me there, Snow.”

“If we got married—”

Baz choked.

“I’m just _saying,”_ said Simon, irritated. “If we did, then I would change my last name just so you couldn’t call me _Snow_ anymore.”

“Then you’d be Simon Grimm-Pitch.”

“It sort of has a ring to it.”

“A wedding ring.”

“Haha.”

“Haha yourself. I need to finish shaving, and you’re distracting me.”

Simon kissed him. 

“That’s counterproductive,” said Baz, putting his hand on Simon’s jaw and nudging him gently away. He didn’t seem as if he minded it much, though.

“Can I help you,” inquired Simon, reaching for Baz’s razor.

“No,” said Baz; "or, at least, you certainly aren't helping now."

Simon eyed the razor in the mirror. He used an electric one, usually, because the noise it made was soothing. He put this one carefully against his freshly shaven face and felt the scratch of Baz’s stubble caught in the blade. “That’s what you said to me,” he said, lowering the razor. “The first time. I mean, the first thing you ever said. To me.”

Baz looked interested. “Was it really?”

“Yes. Except you said it more like, _Can I help you._ Like you were bored out of your skull.”

“I was,” said Baz, half-smiling.

“Until I came in.”

“Until you came in.”

“Or rather…” Simon paused; waited for understanding to begin to dawn in Baz’s eyes; ducked out of the way just in time to miss a swat. “Came _out.”_


End file.
